Hedy Chang is the Founder and Executive Director of Attendance Works. A 1986 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Hedy brings a wealth of knowledge and passion about the intricate tapestry of factors that influence why students may not make it to class. Her Chinese American background and family legacy of activism provide a rich context as we discuss her dedication to unraveling the complexities of chronic absenteeism—an issue that's foundational to achieving justice in our education system.
Learn more about Hedy Chang and Attendance Works.
Hedy Chang is the Founder and Executive Director of Attendance Works. A 1986 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Hedy brings a wealth of knowledge and passion about the intricate tapestry of factors that influence why students may not make it to class. Her Chinese American background and family legacy of activism provide a rich context as we discuss her dedication to unraveling the complexities of chronic absenteeism—an issue that's foundational to achieving justice in our education system.
Learn more about Hedy Chang and Attendance Works.
Having a kid in school so they can learn and thrive is something that everyone of every background can say oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:In this conversation, I was privileged to sit down virtually with Hedy Chang. Hedy is the founder and executive director of Attendance Works, which is a national and state-level initiative that's aimed at advancing student success by addressing chronic absence. Hedy has served as senior program officer at the Evelyn Walter Haas Jr Fund and as co-director of California Tomorrow, which is a nonprofit committed to drawing strength from cultural, linguistic and racial diversity. In February of 2013, hedy was named by the White House as a champion of change for her commitment to furthering African-American education. Hedy talks about her origin story, how she got into thinking about and working on the topic of chronic absenteeism in 2006, when very few states even kept such data, and it brings us up to the current moment, where all states, or virtually all states, gather and use and work with this data. She talks about the different factors impacting student attendance, the importance of connection, belonging, relevant and rigorous education on our campuses, and much, much more. I hope that you enjoy and learn from this conversation as much as I did.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Superintendent's Hangout, where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, dr Shredda, come on in and hang out. Necessarily in that order. I'm your host, dr Shredda. Come on in and hang out. Welcome, hedy. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon virtually and taking the time for this conversation heading into the weekend, my pleasure.
Speaker 2:I was wondering if you could start by sharing your origin story, personally and professionally, and really with an emphasis on the curves in your path that ultimately led you to the work you do today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think my origin story starts with the fact that I grew up Chinese American in the Midwest and also come from a family that has a long history of community building and activism both in China and actually the United States. Okay, so now I am probably going to take a little bit of a divergence. You can see, David, whether you want to include it.
Speaker 2:No, it's great.
Speaker 1:My great grandfather was a Chinese immigrant who came here in the 1880s and then was converted to Christianity, went to New York City and at the time this is the time of the Chinese Exclusion Acts he ended up marrying my great grandmother, who was a woman named Louise Van Arnum who's a woman named Louise Van Arnum. His name was Huey Kinn and they got married at a time when intermarriage wasn't considered very acceptable and in fact, my great-grandmother, who was generations Dutch-American, lost her citizenship when she married my grandfather.
Speaker 2:Because of it. Is that a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act?
Speaker 1:It's that and because if you married someone non-US, your citizenship became that of the person. So my great-grandmother lost her citizenship. Later on they had six daughters and three sons. The six daughters all married Chinese scholars and my grandmother then subsequently lost her citizenship, even though she was American born. And then I grew up. My mom was born in China, then came back to the United States.
Speaker 1:I grew up here in the Midwest where I was it's St Louis Missouri not exactly a lot of Chinese American families, mostly a black white environment, and having grown up understanding kind of a history of otherness and committed myself to because I could see how, when you have to walk in different milieus and understand different realities, it gives you a different understanding of how to make change and how to move forward. And so I really was always thought I was going to take my own personal understanding and fight for equity and justice. That's always been my goal as long as I can remember, and originally I was working for an organization called California Tomorrow where I really looked at more racial equity, linguistic diversity, how do you draw strength upon our diversity but also understand the inequities and look for where we have to make systemic change had also, when I became a mom, realized what a transformative power having kids is for adults. There are things we will do for our kids that we won't necessarily do for ourselves because we want them to have a different kind of life. Right, and had a mentor in life, a guy named Ralph Smith, who was a senior vice president of the Annie Casey Foundation, still continues to be a mentor of mine who helped me take actually a fellowship called Emerging Leaders Fellows where it was in South Africa. Ambassador Dane Joseph was like my main faculty member and had a chance to think about.
Speaker 1:At that time I was trying to think about career changes. I'd be in philanthropy and I created a life mission statement about where I wanted to go and it was about how do you use two generation approaches to move families out of poverty and create a different future. And I created this mission statement, showed it to my friend colleague, mentor Ralph, who was at the senior, who was a senior vice president at the Anna Casey Foundation. He said we should do something that allows you to realize that mission, personal mission statement. And he said I have this project. I think kids missing too much school in the early grades is the reason they're not reading at the end of third grade, which then has huge lifelong outcomes in terms of graduation and economic success. And he asked me if I would figure out. Was there any research that could prove this was an issue, because what would? Didn't we know about best practice, and was data around this being collected in a way that we could eventually include this information in the Annie Casey Foundation's Kids Count data book? And so my work started because I said, okay, I'll take that on, and I will also say at the same time that Ralph asked me to look at that.
Speaker 1:I had my kids in a public elementary school, pretty mixed income public elementary school here in San Francisco. That was very intentional because I believed that I wanted my kids to understand kids from all sorts of walks of life. And one little boy in my oldest child's class, who was born on the exact same day as my kid, was a kid who grew up with very different opportunities in the sense that he was living in public housing, his mom was trying to work her way off welfare, but this little boy was so engaging and bright and, I know, had every ability to succeed that my own kid did. But in second grade this little boy's mom died very suddenly shortly after. We actually had a joint birthday party for them and I think it's because his mom never had access to decent public health lots of other issues. And then I saw this little boy going in the child welfare system and even though we had a caring school environment, we didn't quite know. I was involved as a parent, so I wasn't on staff but did a lot of the after-school programming, and so when my friend Ralph asked me if I would take on this issue, I had this outrage and sense of injustice about this situation and I felt like if I could figure out how to not allow for this injustice to occur, that every kid who had the potential to succeed got the resources and we had the data and the tools to ensure that equal opportunity, then I wanted to try it out. So that was in 2006.
Speaker 1:And the first thing I figured out was that no one was really actually collecting data on how many kids were actually missing too much school for any reason. We looked at unexcused absences In some places. We looked at average daily attendance. There was one longitudinal study our database called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study that you could look at it and that data when we were able to work with Columbia to crunch it showed that about one out of 10 kids were chronically absent in kindergarten and first and then. In fact, if you could track the kids in a cohort all the way through, chronic absence in kindergarten particularly for kids who are low income actually predicted lower third grade, lower fifth grade outcomes. And it was an issue because then we started looking at data in a few localities. At the time, by the way, most localities weren't looking at data because we took data on attendance paper and pencil, so you couldn't even calculate your chronic absence levels.
Speaker 1:But in the few places that already had longitudinal student data systems in 2006, 2007, you could start to look at it, and in one major urban area I saw that 40% of the kindergartners in that area in that major urban area, 6,000 kindergartners were chronically absent and I thought, oh my God, this is not a little issue. I remember texting my friend Ralph. I said this is a huge issue. We're giving up on a generation. We never even gave them a chance and we don't even know that we've done this. And so that was the launch of what became the research that led to me eventually, in 2010, creating Attendance Works because I felt like we needed to find a way to help people understand this was an issue, start to calculate and crunch their data.
Speaker 1:And I will also say what's really funny now is so in 2010, when we launched, there was one state in the entire country that had a little bit of data that was kind of like chronic absence. It was Maryland, because Nancy Grasmick at the time had sought to get people to submit on how many kids missed 20 days or more, five days or less, so a high attendance and a chronic absence issue. I don't even know that she did it from research. I think she did it from common sense, and this was the Anna Casey Foundation, by the way, that had funded this initial work, and part of they had been frustrated because they were doing work nationally and they could only get data like this in Maryland, and I had to explain to them well, you can only get data like this in Maryland because only Maryland has the data In fact, all the other states in the country don't of data.
Speaker 1:In fact, all the other states in the country don't. David, now 48 states in Washington DC have chronic absence data in some form on their state websites. We are so different. And the other thing that was wonderful is when I first wrote back to Ralph and I said you want this in Kids Count. We don't have enough data to make this part of Kids Count and this year, 18 years later, the Kids Count is going to be talking about chronic absence. I had written him back and said it only took me 18 years to eventually achieve the goal that you wanted me to in 2006.
Speaker 2:So when you it strikes me as you described that and thank you for both your excitement about the trajectory but also the highly personal aspect of what really got you into this, right through your son's friend and classmate and his experience it strikes me that if you're sitting next to someone on an airplane they say, hey, how's it going? You know you want some peanuts and what do you do for a living? You've kind of got the researcher hat and you've also got the activist hat right, kind of. At the same time, you need to have some element of activism, of passion to push through 18 years of trying to fight for states to actually count, something that you have a hunch is going on.
Speaker 1:Well, I think a couple things. One is that it's interesting to move change in this country. I think we all have to be able to see and hear each other. We're way too partisan. We don't have our kids as our common investment for a better future for our country. One of the things that I love about the work of Chronic Absence is that I think it's a common sense vision. Having a kid in school so they can learn and thrive is something that everyone of every background can say oh, that makes sense. It also allows you to say well, when kids aren't here, we need to pay attention and where the activist part has to come.
Speaker 1:One of the challenges we have in this country is that often, or historically, when a kid hasn't been in school, we have this kind of truancy mindset, and this is usually the unexcused absences. And our truancy mindset is well, david didn't come to school and that must be because David didn't care, and therefore the way to get David to school is to take increasingly punitive measures to force him and his family to get David to school when there's no evidence, no research that shows taking punitive measures improves attendance. What you have to do in order to get kids to come to school is understand why they aren't showing up in the first place and then come up with solutions that address that. And we have these different buckets. Is it barriers? You don't have access to health care, you have unstable housing, you have unsafe paths to school. Is it aversion? Because what have access to health care? You have unstable housing. You have unsafe paths to school. Is it aversion because what's happening in school the bullying, the anxiety is pushing out? Is it? Is it disengagement? Because you have so much staff turnover, there's no relationship building, so the curriculum doesn't feel engaging and relevant, so you don't want to go to school.
Speaker 1:Or is it misconceptions? You don't realize absences that are adding up? Want to go to school? Or is it misconceptions? You don't realize absences that are adding up? You don't think you have to be in school to learn. You think you can't address health-related absences or prevent them. You got to know those things and once you know those things you can improve it. But blaming kids and families doesn't allow you to know what's going on.
Speaker 1:The key to solutions is building a relationship so you can talk to families about why and then come up with solutions. And where the activist part comes in is when you meet people and you say, hey, you know, so I work on making sure kids come up, show up to school every day. And then when people start to say, well, the reason they don't show up to school is blah, blah, blah, that's where you have to kind of shift the conversation and say, well, what do we know about it? Get people to go into questions. I think when people see absences, they ought to be asking questions and saying this is a moment to build a relationship, so I can find out why kids might not be going to school and then how we can collectively come up with solutions to get them there. And that's where the activist part comes in, as well as the research part. Because I have to say and I remember talking with some folks in a southern state where they're like they wanted to talk to me about doing more punitive measures, and I said, well, that's interesting, because the research that I've seen, for example in South Carolina, which is a southern state, shows that the kids who were missing a lot of school for unexcused absences, who they put into the court system after they did that, compared to peers who didn't go in the court system, their attendance actually got worse.
Speaker 1:Their attendance actually got worse, and part of that is because court systems aren't designed to find out and address why kids don't show up to school in the first place. The deterrent works when you think all of this is just because kids are, and occasionally, by the way, there may be kids who are missing school intentionally, but a lot of times that even comes out of school in the beginning didn't ever engage them in the first place. So anyway, so I just say that you know the activism is get to people to really not make assumptions and see poor attendance, not showing up to school as a reason to build relationship and deep our understanding of each other's realities.
Speaker 2:When you mentioned the punitive piece, I broke out into a cold sweat because your first year of working on this in 2006, was my first year as a middle school principal and I was in my mid thirties and I was having some challenges with some students not attending. And so I thought I'm going to call the county probations department and they had an attendance support division or something and they sent out an officer and the officer came and did a presentation on what Juvenile Hall was like and then stood up there and said to the middle school students hey, is anyone in here? How do you feel about you know, being locked up? And they started this whole punitive talk and I thought I was yeah, I didn't do it with any malice intent, but I'm standing up there thinking I'm getting my point across. All it did was make dozens of parents really mad at me and call me up and yell at me, which I ultimately deserved had no impact on attendance at all, and that's the kind of the dark ages end of the spectrum right on supporting student attendance.
Speaker 1:Well, unfortunately I don't think it's so. Dark ages, david, I think, in people's frustration over the chronic absences now when I started it was about one out of six kids nationwide. Now it's closer to one out of three. And the increase? One of the responses to the increase is we need to take more punitive action. I think I want to actually figure out what we can find of evidence of that, but I hear that in the media a lot. I think there's more legislation happening and you know, one of the things that I want to talk about is that one of the things we don't realize is that even our definition of excused and unexcused so you know, all our punitive stuff is around unexcused absences and there's a every state, there's a lot of variation can be what can be excused and what can be unexcused. A lot of times unexcused has to do with not having documentation over the reasons why you're missing school. Right, you know, california has certainly widened and broadened, especially after the pandemic lots of different reasons why you might be able to be missing school. But you ultimately usually have to have some kind of note that says and it has to fit in California what those absences are and when kids' absences are unexcused. It has a number of repercussions. If your absence is unexcused, teachers aren't necessarily required to help you make up for the lost time in the classroom. Teachers can say, oh, they might, you don't get to go on this field trip because you had an unexcused absences. It starts to almost bias the view of the teacher towards a kid because, oh, david doesn't care, they didn't show up. But imagine two kids. They both missed five days and they were both sick. One kid, hedy, has health care, David does not. Hedy comes in with the doctor's note, david does not. And now I get any help with whatever I missed and you don't.
Speaker 1:So we start a process of pushout and then you look at California's notifications of truancy any three times unexcused and you get the first notification. Any three times late by 30 minutes, you get a notification. And by law right now we have in that notification that we have language that says and if you don't start showing up to school I'm going to take you to court. Not exactly the way to build partnerships with kids and families. Threats don't build partnerships.
Speaker 1:And in Los Angeles we actually worked with LA Unified when Deborah Duarte is now the superintendent of LA County, but she was in the school district and we came up with these different versions of the notice of truancy. And we actually and this was when Kamal Harris was our AG, so we asked for her permission we said if we took the really negative truancy language and shoved it at the bottom of the letter in small font and at the top of the letter put what we wanted, does that count for meeting the language of law? She said OK. Her staff said that's fine. It turns out if you write a notification that starts one not in legalese but normal human language, normal reading. You know, hey, your kid missed these days. Did that seem right? You know we're concerned because if David continues to miss and you know it has consequences, these kinds of consequences, can we help you? If you write that note and put all the other stuff at the bottom, you get better attendance than when you sent out. Use the standard truancy notification out.
Speaker 2:Use the standard truancy notification. That's interesting. Um, it's the all in the messaging and and the suggestion of a relationship, rather than you know, like the speeding ticket notification that you get yeah, you exceeded the speed limit. Now, if you don't show up at court, the fines doubled. Kind of well.
Speaker 1:Part of it, too, is that, um, one of the big motivators for kids to show up at court the fine's doubled. Well, part of it too, is that one of the big motivators for kids to show up to school is relationship. So if your first response is to make kids feel alienated from school and that no one cares about them, that in of itself has not very good consequences for getting kids to school.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure that there's broad consensus or understanding about what it means to be chronically absent. I know that in California there's 10% or more of the days that a student is enrolled. If they're absent that counts. But can you kind of paint the picture, both nationally what that looks like and also what the working definition is that you use in your organization?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I will say that 10% is our recommendation and I think California's rules very much directly reflect that recommendation that we made. And we suggest 10% and that includes any reason excused unexcused suspensions, and the 10% was based on a combination of research and a little bit of what we thought worked in classrooms. So there's a whole plethora of research. Now Part of my work as an organization has been catalyzing needed research and we have research showing, from starting with a chronic absence predicting lower literacy by third grade, worse middle school outcomes, suspensions and then not graduating from high school, and even some evidence that it can affect your continuation on to post-secondary ed.
Speaker 1:Part of what you want to do is look for a metric that you know kids are in trouble if they have it and so, but it's also an early warning metric. So the 10% was not was to avoid people saying, oh, day 17,. I better do something about David Right, day 17 is too late. Day 18, which is 10%, which is one, 18 days out of 180 school years too late. I wanted people to notice you know, hedy missed school in the first two days.
Speaker 1:After she missed two days of the first month, four days of the second month, six days of the third month, so that you're taking an early warning approach to noticing kids on track for chronic absence and then taking action. There is actually some evidence like Santa Ana has some research this was before COVID that showed kids missing just 5%. Already it has an impact on some of their academic achievement, but if you looked for every kid who just missed one day in the first month of school, you would be crying wolf way too many kids. So we're trying to find a metric that both made sense from the research but from an early warning perspective also made sense so that you were identifying kids who were more challenged. And the best predictors of chronic absence are both that you are chronically absent the prior year and also if you are missing 10% of the first month of school.
Speaker 2:So you started to look at this nearly 20 years ago and there's no way you could have predicted a global pandemic at the time, and I think we all know what the pandemic did to, not only to school attendance but to just almost every element of our lives. Can you paint a picture, based on your research, what chronic absenteeism looked like in California just prior and then post-COVID? I know you did some interesting research. I just read a report where you showed a little bit of promise coming out of COVID that rates were down but they're still way higher than they were prior, and then some interesting patterns where elementary schools spiked way up whereas pre-COVID, historically, elementary has had a better attendance than secondary. Can you kind of paint that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that's research that we did with PACE. So if folks want to find it, you can go look for this research report we wrote. So what you know is that chronic absence in California went from something like 12.1 to 30% in 21, 22, 22, 23. It's at about 24.9%. So we are still double the levels of pre-pandemic. But part of the research that we talked about is saying you don't want to just look at the nearly one out of three kids who are chronically absent, you want to notice how many kids are in a school with 20% or more levels of chronic absence. Now research by Michael Gottfried and this was actually done in California too, I think it was in Santa Barbara was where they found this. Michael found that when kids are in schools with 20% or more of their peers chronically absent, it affects the achievement of the entire classroom, not just the kids who are chronically absent. So you've been a classroom teacher. When you have kids turning in and out of your classroom, it makes it a lot harder for you to teach because you don't know whether we move forward with the lesson, repeat the lesson, setting classroom norms. And then there are some kids that get more flustered when they're, you know with the noise of other kids coming in and out and that kind of thing. So before the pandemic, something like nationwide it was 25% of kids schools had about 20% or more levels of chronic absence or 20. And then post pandemic, it's like 66, two thirds of all schools have 20% or more levels of chronic absence. And then post-pandemic, it's like 66, two-thirds of all schools have 20% or more levels of chronic absence. In California in 21-22, we went up to 75% of schools with 20% or more levels of chronic absence. In 22-23, it was still at 68% and this is compared to, I think, about 20% before pandemic. So we had this huge increase. Now, when you break that down, elementary and middle high school, we saw increases in the numbers of schools with 20% or more levels of chronic absence. In elementary, middle high. The only place that didn't really increase was alternative ed, which always was really high. So they were like extraordinarily high. Before the pandemic continued to be really high. Post pandemic we saw increases.
Speaker 1:But you know there are more elementary schools than any other kind of school because elementary schools are kind of small. I also think elementary schools. You know there are more elementary schools than any other kind of school because elementary schools are kind of small. I also think elementary schools, you know, they don't have a lot of staff. They have a principal, they have teachers. Maybe you're good and you've got a social work, but it's not because they're small schools. They don't tend to have a whole lot of extra staff, right, whole lot of extra staff, right.
Speaker 1:And elementary schools before the pandemic I think it was less than 700, 600 something schools that had 20% or more levels of chronic absence and by 22, 23, it was almost 4,000. That increase is huge. When you have a small handful of kids who are chronically absent, you can kind of take a more individual solution. I'll have, you know, a couple teachers you know, or the counselor or something, or the district staff person can come in and we'll problem solve with you because you got like five or six kids, you know maybe 10 kids problem solved with you because you got like five or six kids, you know maybe 10 kids. But when you start to have 20% of your entire school chronically absent in some cases it's much higher than that you need to have a whole school approach where you're taking comprehensive, tiered approach, where you're really investing in what we call positive conditions of learning and everyone, including all your staff, are on board with this approach. But you now have thousands of elementary schools who never before had to take a systemic approach, now having to take a systemic approach.
Speaker 2:A lot of things are going through my mind as you're speaking, because I'm flashing to our own experiences all the time. I noted in that I think it was in the study that you said was the PACE-sponsored study where you talk about as schools, the greater percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged students, the more challenges with chronic absenteeism. However, there were also some indications that in schools that didn't have a high socioeconomically disadvantaged population, they were also wrestling with chronic absenteeism, perhaps for different reasons around, maybe a more prevailing view of school being somewhat optional. How do you tease that out in your research? I don't know. I guess I wrestle with that too right, because I have anecdotal experience of parents going well during COVID. We weren't here at all and so we're planning to go skiing at Mammoth and it's just going to happen, and why can't I go online? That kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think I want to again talk about we need to understand root causes and we also have to understand some root causes may affect all kids, but be present to understand root causes and we also have to understand some root causes may affect all kids, but be present, and some root causes may affect some kids more than others. And I also want to say you know, one of the things that we're seeing is, since the pandemic, more middle class affluent kids are starting to fall in the chronic absent category than before. But I still want to say the majority of kids who are chronically absent 70%, I think of them, maybe higher are actually socioeconomically disadvantaged. So, while there is an increased percentage of more affluent kids who are chronically absent, we should keep in mind that the vast majority of kids who are chronically absent are socioeconomically disadvantaged. In addition, we know that affluent kids are less affected, at least academically, by missing school because their families find things to make up for that time. I'll hire the tutor, I'll create the online curriculum. I have access to a lot more digital learning. Families figure out ways Now.
Speaker 1:There may be consequences, by the way, for more affluent kids, because I think sometimes their ability to connect to peers, their sense of their anxiety levels, their under. You know there's a lot of social emotional development that happens in schools, that when kids aren't there they lose out. The routine of going to school every day actually can have some contributors, I think, to well-being, because we know when kids are anxious one of the ways you want to do is keep in routine. So I'm not saying there aren't some consequences for affluent kids, but it's not the same as the academic consequences for lower income kids who don't have the same access to resources to make up. And we got to keep in mind so this misconception that you tend you don't have to be in school to learn, which I think is a misconception. And it's not just learning. School brings in a whole bunch of other socialization and other benefits that kids learn from. We need kids who can be with kids who are different from themselves. Negotiate conflicts, find commonalities, respect differences Like this is so crucial to our future as a society.
Speaker 1:So there may be learning that gets lost. It's not just not captured by our tests, but For low-income kids, they not only don't have the same access to the same opportunities to catch up or make up, but they face much different barriers, so chronic and acute illness, their families may not have access to health care. We've been decreasing our access to health care for low-income kids, increasing our access to health care for low income kids Trauma. They faced much greater trauma during the pandemic because their families were frontline workers. They lost family members, poor transportation.
Speaker 1:We may have a culture shift, you will Right, and how that's playing out for more affluent kids versus low-income kids is really quite different, in the sense that low-income kids it may be that, oh, if school isn't engaging in getting me to a better future, maybe I will take this job, because I think you know, for right now it's helping my family make ends meet, whereas an affluent kid, you know, maybe the decision is between going to school and taking an extra long weekend to go do something with their family. Those are very different kinds of situations and I think we got to get clear about who's chronically absent, why and what is the supports they need. At the same time, I think some things are probably common across kids School needs to be seen as an engaging, fabulous place. That will get me to a different future, and that needs to be true for all kids, and I think it is raising the bar. I think one of the challenges is that and this is not totally research informed, but I think our kids spend a lot more time on screens than they ever had during the pandemic. And coming back from that to making sure kids see in-person learning and engaging, and also sometimes thinking about how do we take advantage of technological innovation to make school engaging, at least for our older kids.
Speaker 1:But we have an engagement and a barrier issue going on.
Speaker 1:Part of this high levels of chronic absence is because I think kids and families don't feel engaged as much as they could or should be by our schools, and when I've gone to schools that have are the bright spots that have low levels of chronic absence, what I see is a tension.
Speaker 1:It's like two sides of the same coin. One side is making school incredibly engaging and making sure kids and families know how engaging school is and why they need to be there every day, and the other side is making sure that they can provide support to kids and families who are experiencing barriers. And in between the two of them, the center of that coin is relationship building. The center of that coin is relationship building Because the relationship building both helps with the engagement and makes sure that if a kid's facing a challenge, that the school, especially the teacher who sees kids every day. And this is not about adding responsibility to teachers, it's about leveraging the fact that teachers see kids every day so that we can help teachers know when they notice something that they get supports to connect kids to those supports. That's what makes a huge difference in kids showing up every day.
Speaker 2:It's interesting to me that you know, coming out of COVID, there was this whole thing about, at the professional level, the quiet, quitting conversation among you know employees right among you, know employees right who? Who were we? We all go to work because we we choose to work there. But even so there were people who were quiet, quitting, or people who said I'm not going back in person. I like this hybrid lifestyle, I like to work from home, I want to be treated well at work. I'm not. I'm just not feeling it when I go in there. Or career is not everything to me, I'm going to quit and do something else.
Speaker 2:All of those very human reactions, whether they were rational or not, at the adult level. But to have the courageous conversation and it's something I'm nibbling around the edge of, it doesn't always make me popular, but I look at teacher and staff attendance at work pre and post COVID and there's no comparison at Albert Einstein Academies between levels of staff absenteeism pre COVID and post. It's way higher post right, and that's not. I'm not blanket criticizing a group of hardworking professionals, but I think there's some indicators there that I think there's some parallels in society and with our families and with our kids.
Speaker 1:Well, and when we see high levels of absenteeism for either teachers or kids, I think we need to have the same response, which is let me build a relationship and find out why.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What's driving it?
Speaker 1:Sometimes the issues driving kid and teacher absenteeism may be the same.
Speaker 1:I remember being in a school this is pre-COVID but it could still hold true where I was talking to a principal and we were looking at chronic absence levels by classroom and grades and there was one classroom and she goes oh yeah, that classroom has a lot of absenteeism, but we also had some mold issues. You think that answers you know, like before you do anything else, maybe we need to get, like the building inspector, in and figure out what's going on, because I'm sure that's going to affect both. And then you have a cycle Teachers, respiratory is affected, the kids, you know, and then the teacher doesn't have the relationship and so then the kids are more absent. But if we unpacked the issues, I think this issue of lack of relationship building, like we sometimes talk about how I realize there needs to be more research showing that readings by the door actually improves attendance. I think it's hard because it's usually part of some larger piece, but greetings by the door are important, not just for kids, they're for the staff when staff walk in, do they?
Speaker 1:say hello to each other? Do they say hello to the kids? If everyone says hello to each other and makes you feel welcome and connected, I think that would make everyone want to show up to school more.
Speaker 2:I mean, think about the last time you went to a dinner party, right that? Usually the good dinner parties, the host or the hostess is standing at the hey welcome, I'm going to introduce you. Go put your coat over here, right? That's a human thing. So if you can find a way to separate that out in your research, I'll be the first one to be reading that.
Speaker 1:And I think, though, that this is where we should sometimes just use common sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, it's like I think we all got more guarded with COVID. We all, for good reasons, tried to wear masks, do, I think? But we still have to feel cared for, and so I think, how we use our data to unpack where the challenges are and also see who's doing better work. So again I go back to these bright spots and David, we had a webinar on April 3rd which was teachers at the front line, and we had two amazing, an elementary school and a high school principal that talked about all the ways they brought their kids into their classroom, connecting them, connecting to the families, making sure that kids don't feel anxious in their classrooms, you know, because that also can drive kids.
Speaker 1:But there's a whole bunch of things that fall within what teachers can do, and we have to help teachers be able to do this, because they have a ton on their plates, and it's also about sometimes making sure that we have nurses who can help or counselors. So if I have a kid who comes in and who's clearly having a bad day and having challenges, I can bring someone who can come and help me with that kid so I can pay attention to what's happening with my classroom while someone pays attention to this kid who clearly needs an adult to sit down and talk to them. We have to build our systems, but this is what I mean by a system, and now we have all these 4,000 almost elementary schools in California that don't have these systems, that we then now have to have systems building on the fact that they have teachers as their backbone. How do we respect that, understand that, support that and it's not just teachers, it's, in my view, one of the most important people in the school is that front office person who, when you walk into the school office, do they smile, do they greet you, do they say hello? That makes such a difference.
Speaker 1:There was in Arkansas this is pre-COVID, but it's still all true this one principal who had all of her attendance. The front office staff got into attendance but what happened was they were lecturing every kid who came late and onto these long lectures. So then the families and the kids decided well, we'll just miss school that day, because I'd rather miss school than have to subject myself to the lecture. So she started by changing you know, the whole tone of what happened in the front office.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as you say, the common sense is sometimes we don't need to wait for the research studies to come out right, we can just go. What makes me feel good when I go to a restaurant? Do I like to be greeted when I walk in the door to have a bunch of staff go? You're five minutes late for your reservation. So I wanted to talk about the money. We've been talking about the human side. We've been talking about the learning loss and the impact on students From a school funding standpoint.
Speaker 2:My understanding is that there are I don't know half a dozen or so states in the country, like California, that fund schools essentially on average daily attendance, and that there's a whole swath of states where the model is different, right, where it may be more related to enrollment.
Speaker 2:Not sure exactly what that looks like. If you had a magic wand, what would you change, if anything, in the way that schools are funded? Because I have to say that somewhat cynically, that I believe that many school leaders are hyper fixated on chronic absenteeism. Now in California, because there's a red, the dashboard is flashing red at the state level on the accountability and it's also a huge financial impact to build your budgets around. You know, just anecdotally, we built we historically in our organization built our budgets around 97.5% ADA average daily attendance. We did that for 15 years and then COVID hit and we were struggling at 88% and 89, 90. And so now we build our budgets around 95% because we have to keep the lights on and have our staffing levels appropriate and even 95 is hard for us. So are there cases where states have a different model? That's better or worse for getting educators to really focus on chronic absenteeism as a problem?
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is actually a tough issue and I do think COVID has changed it some. First of all, there is only a handful of states that fund based on average daily attendance California, kentucky, texas. Anyway, there's about seven, eight states that fund based on average daily attendance and the other places base it on membership or student count days. I don't know if they're better. To be honest, I'm not always sure because, like you do student counts in September and then a bunch of kids move Like Maryland does student counts, I think and then kids in Baltimore then, after student count day, move over to Anne Arundel, and then you know how are you going to, like you get.
Speaker 1:So there are pros and cons of the different funding issues. The big issue I think, with average daily attendance is one it does create a level of unpredictable and enrollments actually falling too. So even in the enrollment-based ones there's some challenges. The one benefit of average daily attendance it's gotten people to focus on attendance throughout the year, more so than I think. Maybe places that haven't looked at that, although now there's much more accountability for chronic absence, which is actually a different question than the funding one for chronic absence, which is actually a different question than the funding one. I think the thing is. The question about funding is are we adequately funding schools to do what they need to do, and how do we create stability in school funding? And there may be a multiplicity of answers.
Speaker 1:And there's actually a good PACE brief that looked at ADA versus enrollment, what are the pros and cons, and I think it's important to look at that.
Speaker 1:But I do think this issue of how do you and that really is separate from the dashboard, which is saying how many and which kids are chronically absent, and if you have disproportionality, do you need school improvement those are actually two kinds of separate policy conversations.
Speaker 1:I think that school districts basically need to use their data to understand how chronic absence is affecting achievement and how chronic absence gives them clues about which are the student populations that need more outreach and support, and then engage in partnerships with those kids, families and the community organizations that may be connected, and also educators, to better unpack what's causing some of the poor attendance and then what could help them. And some causes may be more universal, like do kids and families really understand what they're learning every day so they know they need to show up? And if they don't, how are you, as a school district and school and through your everyday interactions, going to equip everyone to make sure kids and families know this is why you need to show up to school and not because of money. Money isn't what drives us, it's relationship and it's the notion that I'm learning a skill that will get me to a better future. This is why, for example, in California, career tech education programs have a lot better attendance. That's because it's like a career pathway.
Speaker 2:I know where.
Speaker 1:I'm going.
Speaker 1:And then, if you, think about career tech education programs. Usually they have a cohort of kids who are now in a cohort, so they're meeting other kids. They have a faculty advisor who then gets to know them. So we know that for older kids, kids come to school when they feel connected, that's, I know there's an adult who cares about me. I know there's other kids who I'm connected to, I'm engaged in something pro-social and I feel welcome at my school. Those four things make a difference. Career tech kind of does all four things.
Speaker 1:But in California another thing that we should be looking at for funding is we have expanded learning programs. We have more. We have billions of dollars in expanded learning programs in California. We have more money in expanded learning in California than the entire country has in expanded learning programs and are we leveraging that to create student connection? Are we using our community partners who get to know kids, who see them after school, who can build relationships with families, and are we using that and leveraging that to improve attendance and the early learning opportunities program? The LOP dollars that doesn't go away. Coa dollars goes away at that stage, are we using our community schools dollars? We have a lot of money in community schools. Are we using our early childhood, we have transitional kindergarten, we have resources we got to connect. It's not always about creating some new initiative. It's about taking the initiative that we have that help increase engagement and maybe create other resources to address barriers to getting to school. And we need to make sure using our data on chronic absence is informing how we effectively deploy those resources.
Speaker 2:You've been very generous with your time and I just had a couple more questions for you. Hedy, I really thank you and also thank you for clarifying and wading through my kind of muddy question where I lumped a couple different issues together, but I wanted to just from one Thomas J Watson fellow to another. I'm not sure how many of our listeners are aware of the Thomas J Watson Fellowship, but it was a really transformative process and experience for me in the early 90s. And can you tell us a little bit about what you did for your Watson Fellowship? And you and I were laughing pre-recording about how neither of us really could connect our fellowship to our current work. But maybe when you describe what you did, maybe listeners will find some threads through there.
Speaker 1:Well and there may be some threads. So I did my fellowship looking at Chinese factory women and how they handled the double burden of domestic labor and factory work and compared what was happening in mainland China, singapore and Taiwan. One of the things that was really helpful was really I tried to go and got my Chinese still not that good, but enough so that I could talk to people, because you got to talk to people and hear what their lives are like and understand that. So, as well as look at data, I also think I learned a lot about. One of the things I learned at that time was how much women's lives were being controlled, regardless of the government they were in. In mainland China, you were with a work unit that kind of you were assigned all your life and literally there was lots of control because it was a one child only policy and there was a lot of monitoring on childbirth practices, like whether you were using a birth control In Singapore women.
Speaker 1:The government the Singaporean government was really focused on making sure they were worried because of the uneducated often non-Chinese were having kids more than the Chinese. So they created tax incentives so that if you were poor and got a tubal ligation, you ended up getting money in your Social Security and your housing and if you were wealthy you got a tax credit. And in Singapore and in Taiwan there was this M curve where women would work in the early years, they'd have kids and then they'd have to come back and work later on because they needed it for economic survival. So it was really seeing how I guess there's a connection about both using qualitative and quantitative data. I also at the time ended up realizing, because I was doing a lot of my research, by going through family members, particularly in mainland China, and feeling incredibly worried that if I did something, that my family members would suffer the consequences of my actions and I would not.
Speaker 1:And it made me choose not to do international work because I thought I understand what this means because I have family here. But if I'm in a country where I don't have family, do I fully appreciate the consequences of my actions for the local people who are here, who ultimately must pay the price if I make a mistake? Now what I learned over years is I'm not so sure it's as clear to me that we don't have that same dynamic going on in the United States. I'm middle class, I'm privileged, I live in a community where some of the what happens doesn't have the same consequences for me as they do in communities of color where I don't live for me as they do in communities of color where I don't live, and I think I became. It helped me see that, you know, we really ought to take stock of how both our lives are interrelated, but also really understand that those who most bear the consequences of policies and action have a chance to have voice in where their future goes.
Speaker 2:So thank you for that. I see a lot of through threads actually from what you described of your Watson to your current work. So thank you. Current work, so thank you, thank you. I, in my case, am thankful all the time for both becoming bilingual and becoming fluent in Spanish, just from that year spent in Central America and Mexico, and also learning from the mistakes that I made and having a disorganized project and, I think, part of Watson, they assume you're going to kind of bumble around a little bit for a year.
Speaker 2:You know you're 22 years old and you know you're full of idealism and, at least in my case, pretty low on logistical details pre-internet era. But I muddled my way through and I've found in my current work. You know that I go back and go ah, that's a mistake I made 30 years ago. I'm not going to make it today. So oh, but yeah, thomas J Watson Fellowship pretty remarkable gift to the world. I wish it were more broadly accessible in more universities around the country or in some other way. Before I ask the last question, is there anything that we have not touched on, related to chronic absenteeism, that's kind of been kicking around for you and that you'd like to just mention?
Speaker 1:I would just say that we can't accept the current levels as a new normal we can't accept the current levels as a new normal.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask you that. I was going to say is this the new normal? Will we ever get back to where we were?
Speaker 1:I believe we can, but it's going to take intentionality. Relationship building, rebuilding trust doesn't happen overnight. We can use data to figure out how to get there and we have to have persistence over time. It's not going to happen. It's going to take, you know, maybe five years, maybe a little longer. We got to be prepared for a long haul approach to using our data to inform how we build relationship, to make sure that people most affected have a voice in the solutions, and it's going to take. I think everyone can make a difference here and we're all going to also have to contribute to making a difference.
Speaker 2:My last question is a hypothetical. If you have the opportunity to create a billboard for the side of whatever freeway is near where you live, I had one person say I don't believe in billboards. They pollute my view. So we're going to get past that because this is just hypothetical. So if you had a chance to create a billboard that would contain a message that you would like the world to know about your work and what you believe in, what would that billboard say? As people drive by, either going 70 or, in the case of San Francisco, maybe seven miles an hour, depending on what time of day it is?
Speaker 1:Kids show up to school. When we show, we care and we listen.
Speaker 2:Kids show up to school. When we show, we care and we listen. That's a perfect place to wrap up today's conversation. Hedy, thank you so much for your time and your expertise and for your combination of activism and scholarship and research on behalf of all of our students. And you gave me hope in our conversation, because I've been trending towards that place of resignation and saying I just don't know if we're ever gonna get back to where we were. So this has revived that hope for me. So thank you, thank you. Thank you for listening to the Superintendent's Hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at DVS1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world. Thank you to Brad Backeal for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day.